ABSTRACT
Farming is fundamental to societies that rely on a regular food supply and employ the practice of agriculture to produce food and fibre from the landscape. Farmers felt their financial viability was threatened as markets collapsed and stock were almost valueless. Before agriculture, hunting and gathering by small bands of people fed a small human population. Over thousands of generations societies learnt to match their population to the available resources. The dawn of agriculture was probably a haphazard affair as people adapted to a very different life and had to match their population to the food supply, no easy feat in a world with a variable climate. However, the great advantage of agriculture was that it made it possible to produce surplus food, gradually leading to an increased population. It allowed time for reflection and for early forms of government and religious institutions to become part of a gradually more complex society.
